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Paul Caginalp |
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Science |
Grade 8 |
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Regular |
4/5-end |
Newton, Fluids, and Pressures
Abstract: While learning Newton’s Laws, fluids, and pressures the students will gain skills that will help their reading and reading comprehension. Students will learn skills related to being scientifically aware people. They will be able to read about science issues and understand what is being done, if not the science behind it. They will also have to take a scientific phenomenon and write about why it happens.
Topic list:
Newton’s First Law
Newton’s Second Law
Newton’s Third Law
Pressure
Air
Fluids
Bernoulli’s principle
Pascal’s principle
Buoyancy
Vocabulary Words:
Outside Force: a force from outside of the system or reference frame
Reactionary force: The equal and opposite force of a force pair
Pressure: force per area
Fluids: any substance that molds itself to a container
Hydraulics: any system that uses a non compressible liquid to transfer pressure
Key activities:
Demo quick writes
Lab write ups
Current events
Article discussions
Text set:
Science and Tech section of New York Times -Current events
“Science” magazine –article presentations
“National Geographic” magazine –article presentations
Holt Science & Technology. Physical Science. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY: 2001 – main text used as a review at night of the days lesson
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians -spotlight on a scientist
http://www.anecdotage.com/ -spotlight on a scientist
Parker, Barry. The Isaac Newton School of Driving: Physics and Your Car. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore, 2003. –Secondary book from the text in an area where most of my students have a lot more background knowledge to rely on.
Big Ideas: The big ideas for this unit fall into two categories: The explicit curriculum and the hidden curriculum. My explicit curriculum big ideas include relating all the concepts they are learning to life around them and getting the most out of what the state says they need to know. The hidden curriculum is related to applying the concepts to daily life, but also includes that they are to become scientifically literate people. So many articles are written badly about science (I know I harp on this a lot). One such article after the Chernobyl explosion contained the sentence: Graphite, a form of lead, was partly to blame for the explosion. Now, it is true that graphite was partly to blame for the explosion…but graphite is a form of carbon. The fact that a newspaper man can make errors like this is rather unbelievable, but stems from the problem that people see science as naturally difficult. We need to break that barrier before the science divide in this country gets even worse.
Objectives:
The students will be science literate
The students will understand how the laws given relate to the world around them.
The students will be able to write about a demonstration they see
Central question:
How can the exploration of science make us more able society members
Assessment:
The major assessment for this unit is going to be the quick writes that the students do on the demos I present. I will be presenting at least five demos which the students can use to gain practice doing demo quick writes. The last test of their ability will be on the second quiz, and will be graded. All the ones before will be either practice or worth a homework grade. I am not looking so much for accuracy at describing what went on. Even I cannot get good accuracy looking at a demo for the first time and describing it. What I am looking for is the application of what we have been doing, and the logical thought process. They have to be able to express what went on in a logical coherent manner most likely using vocabulary words of the unit. The first couple they will do, then we will go over them in class. After that they will be on their own to decide what is going on.
My other big form of assessment will be the article discussions that they have to do. They will do it in groups of two, and present it for around five minutes to the class. From the Science or National Geographic magazines (or others if we have access) they will pick an article of interest to them and give a summary of the article. In their summary they must include what the article means to them and why it was interesting. I also want them to come up with what the scientists are trying to do/research. They will have to meet with me the day before their presentation to make sure they are ready, otherwise meetings are left for them to arrange. I suspect that they would be a bit shaky towards the beginning of the year on this kind of work, but I also expect it to get much better with time.
The students will be expected to do a current events assignment as well as the article discussions. The current events article will stem mainly from the science and technology page of the New York Times. The social studies teacher at S-E school uses the SQ3R method, so I will carry on with that trend. I will ask students to take notes on an article in the SQ3R method and collect their notes. I will have to start off with teaching them the SQ3R method and probably modeling it a few times on my own, but I think that having them take the notes in this method and being graded on their notes will improve their SQ3R technique quite a bit.
The last reading assignment set I will ask them to do will be the spotlight on a scientist series. From a content standpoint it increases motivation by showing that the scientists who discovered these things were people. I try to find not only facts on the person’s life but interesting or funny ones. One example is Daniel Bernoulli once was on a train talking to the person across from him. He decided to introduce himself after about an hour of talking to the stranger. The stranger replied “And I sir, am Sir Isaac Newton.” Daniel considered that one of the highest compliments he ever received. I try to find interesting tidbits from history and I hope the kids will do the same. They will be required to use the two websites I have provided to get information, and then use a third source. If they find anything different at the third source they must evaluate which source they think is the best.
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Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
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Newton’s laws- first Vocab: outside forces Demo quick write Model use of websites for spotlight on a scientist. Group 1 start looking for article Text reading 145-147 |
Newton’s Laws-second 20 questions derive second law Text reading 148-150 |
Newton’s Laws-second Lab Kids have lab write up do Thursday Read first and second law parts of physics and your car |
Newton’s Laws-third Vocab: reactionary force Demo quick write Text reading 150-152 |
Quiz Current events due Group 1 presents article |
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Pressure Air pressure brainstorming activity Vocab: pressure, fluids Demo quick write Group 2 start looking for article Text reading 163-164, P166 |
Bernoulli’s principle Demo quick write I do spotlight Bernoulli Text reading 173-176 |
Lab Bernoulli’s principle and aerodynamics Students have lab write up due Thursday Read third law part of physics and your car |
Pascal’s principle Vocab: Hydraulics Kids do spotlight Blaise Pascal for tomorrow Text reading 167 |
Buoyancy Demo quick write Group 2 presents Text reading 168-171 |
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Review/problem solving day Group 3 start looking for article |
Quiz Demo quick write |
Start next unit… |
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Group 3 presents Current events due |
Other activities relevant to reading:
Obviously the students haven’t gotten through the entire physics and your car book. At some point I would like them to write a chapter for a similar book about another physics topic. It could be Bernoulli’s guide to flying or anything else we have gone over, but I think that this section is already a little over the top with work. I would probably try to throw it into a later section when they have more scientists to choose from and they have read more of their books. The anticipation guide for it would start out with questions about how a car works (some of my students are quite knowledgeable about them) and move on to how the things we are learning in class affect cars.
You can see that I have neglected to use any graphic organizers in the unit. Instead I plan to draw pictures. One such example of a picture would be for the buoyancy unit. The picture is of a rock, a fish, and a duck in water. The duck floats, the fish is somewhere in the middle, and the rock is on the bottom. I then get into a discussion with the kids about what that means for the buoyant forces on the objects and for their weights. For visual learners these diagrams work well, while the audio learners keep up from the lectures.
For kids that are at a lower reading level than my text ( the text comes up in the 7th grade range on a fry readability chart, but the background knowledge needed is rather high) I will have them read with our reading AIS teacher, so that she can help them along.
Smarter method:
Select: The key content I want them to gain through reading is to be science literate. More and more the state guidelines are leaning towards students being science literate and being able to describe scientific phenomenon. I want the students to see what an article about science is all about. I want them to have some idea where the future goals are going and where they are now. I also want them to eventually be able to look at a demonstration and describe what happened. To do that they have to be even more science literate because they have to write it.
Map: I think that a map of the above goals would be rather futile as the goals are extremely broad. I think it would probably be better to go straight to where the students currently stand. Right now I have above half of my students reading at grade level in English, but they don’t see much writing in science. They do occasional questions in science and that’s about it. The demo quick writes I have done so far are very much met with confusion and not much analytical thinking. As they get more used to them I suspect that they will get closer and closer to good logical answers. Their prior knowledge also will help them get better answers, as the demo I did the other day was fairly unusual in everyday life.
Analyze: Some of my students have great background knowledge. Some do not. Some of my students have been to Disney world and flown in an airplane while some are much more knowledgeable about their trailers. This disparity makes it much harder to teach these concepts to some students. The reading gap also makes it much harder to teach to some of my students, as they get almost all things written for them in class. Teaching them to read for the content and get a meaningful summary is where I think I will have the most problems. Most of my students are not adverse to thinking, and they like a good challenge like explaining a demo. Since they can do any article that they find interesting for the presentations and for the current events I think that they will at least be mildly interested them.
Reach: To teach the content I think that I want to try to lecture first and then have them read the book. Most of them are visual learners, so it might be more beneficial the other way around, but I want them to pick up the loose ends from the book, not the other way around. I hope that since I have built their knowledge in class they will have an easier time reading the book. I also try to give them homework that constitutes around 10-20 minutes per night. It doesn’t take long, but it will refresh them a little on anything I might test on. For the demonstrations, I think only practice will help them get better, so they may not do so well on the first few.
Teach: I point out in the demo writes that I am looking for thought process, not the right answer. I hope that this gives them more freedom in their answers and also gets the point across that they have to think logically. I have been looking for bad science articles recently to get the point across of how science illiterate people are, so I can show them what not to be by the end.
Evaluate: The students didn’t always come up with logical conclusions on the quick write I did the other day, but at least 99% of them had something down, and it used words that they had learned in the last few days. I view that as a positive thing, and I think it will get much better with time. As the students get more used to it they will get more and more in tune with science, but I really need to use this technique for a year or so before I can tell whether/how I need to modify it.
Re-evaluate: I don’t think that I am getting enough of the unit content into their heads with my last two days of teaching. I think that the main problem falls within the class and the way I am teaching it, I need a better way to do it. Using a strategy at night with their text reading would be beneficial to them and help them pick up the things they learn in class, but I already have so much homework going that I think it would be too much. I try to ask only a few pages a night in the reading so that they will do it, and I try to assign no more than 4 problems a night so that they don’t feel overwhelmed. They really fought the fact that I give homework all the time since Bill doesn’t. Right now it seems that they are having the most problem with ideas that are math related. The math skills in the school are rather poor I have found, much poorer than the reading skills. With any math related concept they seem to tune it out and hope it goes away, which it usually does after a few days until the test at the end. I need a better way for them to understand the equations that I give.